


Being Tony

by garyindistress



Series: Scenes from Zhang Yixing Is a Girl [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:58:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garyindistress/pseuds/garyindistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>EXO-M is SM's first co-ed idol group. AKA Scenes from Zhang Yixing is a Girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

No one says it, but Yixing is Gwen; Yixing is definitely Gwen. Lu Han thinks it whenever they do an interview and Yixing gets drilled on her favorite designers, which member she’d be most willing to date, what it’s like as a girl among a brood of five hot-blooded males?

“Um, it’s okay,” Yixing says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. She says she prefers jeans and sweats but would like to get married in Vera Wang, maybe, someday. She says Kris, because who wouldn’t? But Minseok is the most down-to-earth, she adds, and the oldest, and would make a great oppa.

“You mean he’s not already a great oppa,” jokes the Sina hostess, who’s always trying to stay a step ahead, teasing something more interesting out of them than they have to offer.

No, no, they rush to say, and Yixing is lost in the mild chaos, kind of forgotten. They drew her a wing today, flicking up from the corner of her eye, and it makes her look smart and mysterious. They’re dressed in suits and she’s in a sleeveless silk blouse with a rounded black collar, showing off her skinny biceps. The past three weeks have been painful: no grains, no fruit, minimal water for the last five days. Coffee okay. Lu Han was famished just watching her, but Yixing didn’t sweat the small stuff, just peed out the last three kilos. It was probably her greatest asset, besides the dancing. Dancing came with the territory.

Not too much flirting, they’d repeated the weeks before debut. The fans will hate you enough as is.

“It’s okay if you guys do it though,” Hyunkyun-hyung said, meaning the guys, meaning Lu Han, who learned fast. Lu Han pulled his lips apart into a crazed joker grin and swept an arm around Minseok, wouldn’t let go for the next five minutes.

“Got it,” Yixing said and rolled her shoulders back. She was a soldier, designed to take orders.

Lu Han had a week to move in with Zitao and Minseok. He left the giant Stitch doll on his bed, which would later be replaced with a couch and bookcase, as “a memento to remember me by,” he said, drawing his arms in front of him like a ghost as he floated out of the room. Yixing shook her head, a flop of bangs lifting away from her left eye, forging a clear path of vision between them. It was weird how often they looked at each other and how little of each other they actually saw.

Two years ago, she had a choice and she said, “Lu Han—because I don’t see him as a man.” At the time Lu Han’s hair was longer than hers and the only time he used the company gym was to hop on the treadmill. “Ow,” Lu Han said, clutching his heart, and then grinned, because two years ago he didn’t see her as anything either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Gwen Stefani and No Doubt circa the 90s


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re actually pretty manly,” Yixing says. She’s looking at the hair on Lu Han’s legs, soft and sticking up from the static of his bathrobe.

Lu Han feigns hurt, or tries to. But he’s too lazy to really move his face. “You just noticed,” he says, hoping the pain of being boxed in as the token pretty boy comes across in his voice. They need to work on emoting, the whole band. Right now he’s one of the better ones, and that’s a scary thought. Yixing is the worst, which drives Hyunkyun-hyung nuts because, “You’re a girl. You’re supposed to bring emotions to the table.” His blowup came after one of their first interviews. Someone had brought out a cake and she couldn’t stop staring at it. All her answers thereafter were monosyllabic—“Yeah,” she said, or “Kris,” who had everything memorized. The problem was he looked like he had everything memorized.

Yixing had bowed past her hip and repeated that she would try harder. She clasped the back of her knees as she folded from the waist and her shirt rode up a little, revealing a delicate jut of her spine. Sometimes, in the past, when she turned around to change in their room Lu Han could count them like rungs on a ladder. It used to make him nervous.

He’s thought about telling Kris. They smoke in the bathroom some days; he sits over the edge of the sink and leans his head against the mirror, lets Kris unload all his shit on him. Someone has to do it, be the cushion that catches. The job used to fall on Yixing, but they all know where that led. The six months Lu Han spent as roommates with Jongdae remain the worst memory of their predebut lives. In the morning Yixing ducked out of Kris’ room with a happily fucked glow that no one wanted to witness and everyone was secretly devastated over. Not because it was Yixing, but because it was unfair. Jongdae hadn’t touched a boob in over a year. But their misery helped Kris cultivate an ego, which came handy later.

They’re alright now. After the breakup Yixing said that “the haze had lifted,” that she could write better songs for it, and Kris said, to Zitao, “Lend me some of your porn.” Zitao said, “Okay, the password’s ‘ramen blowjob’,” and Minseok said, “What?” He understood the word for blowjob. It was one of the first things Lu Han had taught him. Neither of them has had the chance to use it since.

“Hey,” Yixing is saying. “I always noticed, even before you started working out.”

It’s not a secret that Lu Han’s trying to gain muscle mass, and failing. “Slow gains are the best,” Hyukjae-hyung had told him, clapping a firm hand on his shoulder. It almost sent him toppling over. That night he researched protein powders, poring over reviews on bodybuilding.com.

“The fuck is this,” Hyunkyun-hyung had said a few months later, staring at his baby bicep. Lu Han was wearing a tank that day, feeling a little proud of himself. “No, no, no.”

He doesn’t know what to say back to Yixing. Compliments, especially matter-of-fact ones, make him feel stripped down, not just looked at but carefully observed. He likes them, just never knows how to respond to them.

He props his feet on the bed where she’s dangling her legs and rests them near her knees.

“Uh, can you put on some underwear before you do that,” Yixing says. She has her head turned away like the view of Lu Han’s balls is toxic to her eyes. 

Lu Han spots an opening and snatches it. “Real men don’t need underwear,” he says triumphantly. 

Yixing looks like she’s going to fight him on that. Instead she reaches over to twist a tuft of leg hair between her fingers and makes him scream.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/3/13: I took some liberties with recent events. (Procrastinating the only way I know how orz)

They get caught in the early germinations of a scandal, sharing drinks with a couple of older girls at a restaurant. How it develops now is up to the carpet-sweeping prowess of their fans, and nobody’s dumb enough to underestimate a well-trained militia of teenage girls. That’s not to say they aren’t pretty fucking stupid for letting it happen in the first place.

In one photo Minseok’s walking ahead, hands shoved into his coat pockets. Kris is just behind him, a beanie pulling his hair down flat over his eyes. Lu Han looks the worst of the three, frizzy hair and mossy sideburns, the skin above his upper lip shadowing with stubble. Of course they’d zoom in on him. He leaves the room while everyone’s crowded around the computer, shocked into nerveless silence. Yixing finds him in the bathroom. She closes the door and frowns through the smoke.

“I could’ve been taking a piss,” Lu Han says weakly. It would be a lie to pretend he doesn’t want company right now. He just doesn’t think he deserves it.

“Please tell me you at least got a handjob out of it,” Yixing says. Her smile is twitchy, given with effort.

He snuffs out the cigarette against the sink, tosses it into the toilet. “I’m an idiot.” 

“No,” Yixing says. “The three of you collectively are idiots. You should form your own subgroup. EXO-I.”

Lu Han looks down at his nails. They’re yellowing from all his vices. “Maybe the M in EXO-M actually stands for moron.”

“In that case I think I deserve to go solo already.”

“You probably do,” he says, lifting his head.

She lets him sleep over. They share a bed for the first time since she started seeing Kris. It wasn’t a tradition, just a fallback plan for the late nights of talking when suddenly the distance to his own bed across the room stretched as wide as a moat. They never picked it up again after the breakup. The six months were enough to let them know how precarious all their relationships were. 

He sleeps on his back, a compromise between what he wants and what is right. She watches him. He feels it, in the heat that centers in his chest and ripples further and lower.

His heart has always been the eye of the tornado; his dick, a corollary response.

The next time he sees Yixing, she is a boy.


End file.
